Differences on Myanmar Weaken Asian Trade Pact

By WAYNE ARNOLD

Published: November 21, 2007

Southeast Asian leaders signed a charter here on Tuesday that was drafted as a watershed document to bind the region together in a European-style economic community, but the pact has instead exposed the sharp divisions over one of its members, Myanmar.

The Asean charter establishes the group as a legal entity, creating permanent representation for members at its secretariat in Jakarta, Indonesia, and committing heads of state to meetings twice a year. It includes a blueprint for economic reforms intended to create a European-style trading bloc by 2015, with free movement of goods, services, investment and skilled labor. The document also sets timelines for the elimination of nontariff barriers and other trade restrictions.

But the president of the Philippines has warned that her country may not ratify the document if Myanmar does not institute democratic changes and release the long-detained opposition leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi.

The blueprint also falls short of establishing the customs union many businesses in the region have been hoping for. And it includes a provision that allows members to opt out of economic commitments if other members agree.

''The charter they ended up with is very diluted, to a point where it doesn't make any new ground,'' said Thitinan Pongsudhirak, director of the Institute of Security and International Studies in Bangkok. ''What we have is the codification of existing norms.''

It is increasingly clear that Myanmar is a liability to regional status. On Monday, the United States trade representative, Susan C. Schwab, warned that the situation in Myanmar was holding up progress toward a free trade agreement between the United States and Asean. And President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo of the Philippines warned that unless Myanmar committed itself to democratic reforms and released Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi, her country's Congress was unlikely to ratify the charter, essentially vetoing it.

Pointing to Asean's track record of lofty targets and pedestrian achievements, economists and analysts have voiced skepticism about the group's ability to follow Europe's lead given the widely divergent levels of economic development among its 10 members -- with rich Singapore at one end of the spectrum and impoverished Laos at the other.

''The disparities are still quite big,'' said Chua Hak Bin, an economist at Citigroup in Singapore. ''Don't even talk about a single currency. It's so far away.''

The squabbling over Myanmar only underscored the disparate levels of political maturity and development that exist between Asean's older and newer members.

Asean's newer members, poor and ruled by autocratic governments -- Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam -- empathize with Myanmar's ruling junta and oppose efforts to press it to tolerate political dissent. Analysts said these countries feared that any stronger action by Asean on Myanmar might set an unwelcome precedent.

These three nations helped Myanmar block plans by Singapore to have the United Nations special envoy to Myanmar, Ibrahim Gambari, deliver a briefing on Wednesday to a meeting that includes leaders from Asean, China, Japan, South Korea and India. (Mr. Gambari instead held private talks with Asean leaders late Tuesday, although China's prime minister, Wen Jiabao, reportedly declined to meet with him.)

But Asean's original, more developed members -- Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines among them -- now see Myanmar as a diplomatic embarrassment that needs to be handled through careful pressure and persuasion. All of Asean's members agree that sanctions like those imposed by the United States and Europe would serve only to isolate Myanmar further and reduce what little leverage they have over the junta.

The charter resolves to create an Asean human rights body but has no provisions for enforcing compliance with any human rights standard.

''They're more into rhetoric than real action,'' said Sinapan Samydorai, president of the Think Center, a nongovernmental organization in Singapore. ''They can talk about human rights, but they can't enforce it.''